Banks Handle an Increasing Load

A Monday holiday and weekend business made Oct. 15 a busier one than normal for banks.

Jeff Thames, senior vice president and cashier of First National Bank of Springdale, said because banks were closed for Columbus Day on Oct. 14 they got hit a little harder with three day’s worth of transactions the following Tuesday.

“It was probably a little heavier than normal,” Thames said. “It’s hard to say exactly what transactions were specific to that Tuesday, but overall it appears that we were pretty busy.”

The bank is mid-to-large for the area which has assets of $353 million and four local locations. It processed $5.6 million through the Federal Reserve’s automated clearing house — the electronic system for processing checks and automatic drafts — through 3,299 ACH transactions on Oct. 15.

First National also processed 5,287 Visa debit card transactions totaling $170,953 and 4,667 automated teller machine transactions worth $154,787. The bank has eight ATM locations.

“Just looking at the Visa debit and ATM transactions together, that’s 10,000 transactions right there,” Thames said. “That’s more than the number of checks that we processed through the Federal Reserve. Fifteen years ago, it would have been 20,000 checks through the Fed and now it’s down to about 9,000.”

Thames said electronic transactions have made banks so much more efficient because they’re less costly than pushing paper.

“There is also typically less margin of error for electronic transactions,” Thames said. “If your card is encoded properly, the money will always come out of the right account. But if a proof operator mis-encoded the amount of a check, that could accidentally go through for say $100 instead of $10.”

First National made 15 loans totaling $2.1 million and received 400 loan payments totaling $831,742.

It also did 39 wire transfers and 29 telephonic transfers.

Arvest Bank Group Inc. is the largest local banking operation and second largest in the state with assets of $4.8 billion. It has 87 ATM locations throughout Benton and Washington counties, and it shows.

The bank had about 23,000 ATM transactions totaling about $150,000 and 45,733 Visa debit card transactions on Oct. 15.

Arvest Bank made 172 total loans that day totaling $6.3 million. Arvest Mortgage Co. processed 81 residential mortgage loans totaling $9 million, 75 percent of which were for customers in the two-county area.

Bob Kelly, president of Arvest, said the electronic banking age overall has produced a paradigm shift for the banking industry and its customers.

“Banking has achieved some operational efficiencies with electronic banking,” Kelly said. “But more than that, it’s created a larger number of additional transactions. When ATMs first came out, people were worried we wouldn’t have any more tellers. But we have hundreds and hundreds of tellers today handling more transactions per teller than even in the old days.

“I used to just go to the bank twice per month to deposit my check, but now I go to the ATM every other day to get $20 or $50 here and there. It’s added enormous convenience to retail and commercial customers.”

Giving customers more flexibility to use their money, and a variety of services such as wire transfer and sweep accounts, have helped remake banking’s image to one of convenience and comfort, Kelly said.